Digital asset investment firm Canary Capital has launched a new Axelar private investment fund, giving institutional investors direct access to the interoperability network’s native token, AXL.
According to a Feb. 20 announcement, the Canary AXL Trust will be available to institutional and accredited investors. Currently, Axelar (AXL) has a market capitalization of more than $444 million and $195 million in total value locked (TVL), according to DefiLlama.
Axelar’s TVL peaked at around $345 million in December. Source: DefiLlama
Axelar’s interoperability stack went live in October, allowing decentralized applications to connect with various blockchains, including Solana, Stellar and Sui. Axelar’s technology also allows developers to tokenize real-world assets, including real estate, commodities and intellectual property.
Canary cited Axelar’s major institutional partnerships with Apollo Global Management, JPMorgan and Deutsche Bank as one of the reasons for launching an AXL fund.
“In addition to evaluating top 20 market cap protocols, we are evaluating a handful of top 100 market cap protocols that have strong teams of developers that are building real applications and platforms [and] have the potential, based on developer interest along with launching product, to win in their category and make it to a large market cap,” Canary Capital CEO Steven McClurg told Cointelegraph.
“Axelar qualifies in the category of interoperability,” said McClurg. “There is already demand for AXL among qualified investors.”
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Institutional demand for crypto is growing
The launch of Canary’s new trust coincides with a boom in institutional demand for crypto assets. Unlike the closed-ended AXL Trust, Canary is also pursuing open-ended exchange-traded funds (ETFs) with exposure to Solana (SOL), Litecoin (LTC) and XRP (XRP).
The applications were submitted following the overwhelming success of the US spot Bitcoin (BTC) ETFs, which sucked in nearly $40 billion in net assets in 2024. Bitwise’s Matt Hougan believes the US Bitcoin funds could attract more than $50 billion in investor inflows this year.
Increased regulatory clarity in the United States under President Donald Trump is expected to see more institutional uptake of digital assets in the near future, Chainalysis CEO Jonathan Levin told Cointelegraph in January.
Industry executives have also cited President Trump’s executive order banning the creation of a central bank digital currency as a major driver of institutional adoption.
Source: Alex Krüger
“This move tells you where Trump stands: He’s betting on the existing crypto market rather than creating government-backed digital dollars. It’s a vote of confidence in Bitcoin, Ethereum and others, potentially giving them a boost in legitimacy and market value,” Anndy Lian, an intergovernmental blockchain adviser, told Cointelegraph.
Representatives from the crypto and institutional investment industries recently met with President Trump’s Crypto Task Force to discuss ways to open up the market to more established players. They requested clearer guidelines around exchange-traded products and protocol staking, among others.
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